WATERTOWN, NY (WTXL) — A former New York bus driver who plead guilty to raping a 14-year-old girl he met while on his job will avoid prison time.
Shane Piche, according to Watertown Daily Times, will spend the next 10 years on probation. The sentence comes after the 26-year-old pleaded guilty in February to raping a 14-year-old girl he met while driving her school bus. The assault happened at his Watertown home.
Instead of spending time in prison, Piche will be registered as a Level 1 sex offender, which is considered to be at low risk of committing the crime again and is not included in online sex offender databases.
According to Watertown Daily Times, the judge said that Piche had no prior arrests and there was only one victim in this plea, so a Level 1 designation was more appropriate.
“He’ll be a felon for the rest of his life. He’s on the sex offender registry for a long time, maybe not the rest of his life because of the level. But this isn’t something that didn’t cause him pain and this isn’t something that didn’t have consequences,” Piche’s defense attorney Eric Swartz told WWNY-TV.
